Presto Change-Oh!

My 8-year-old son, Lewis, talks about what he wants to be for Halloween starting in April.

Last year it went something like this: In May, he wanted to be a blood-sucking zombie. In June, he was set on Stone Cold Steve Austin, and in July he was sure that he wanted to be a ninja warrior. Although I tried to steer him toward costumes that wouldn’t incite my neighbors to report me to the authorities, Lewis has faith that every October I will be able to help him morph into whatever disgustingly morbid or macabre creature he fancies. And he might be right. I have created ghosts out of almost new, 100-percent cotton bed sheets, dismantled my dining room, put sheers to cloth to create a convincing mummy, and used up countless rolls of heavy duty aluminum foil to wrap robots, knights in shining armor and the Tin Man.

But I’m not complaining. I see Halloween as an opportunity to prove that my year as an art major wasn’t a total waste. And I challenge any abstract expressionist to make a Britney Spears costume that can be worn over a late-fall jacket.

By last August, Lewis had mercifully abandoned the ninja idea. He wanted to be a wizard. Sure, I knew that he’d probably change his mind a hundred times before Halloween. Still, I couldn’t help but be pleased. A wizard costume sends a good message to the neighbors. Wizards are rooted in literature. There’s Merlin, Gandolf and Harry Potter. If my son roams the neighborhood in a wizard costume, I reasoned, people might think that we’re well-read, well-bred and possibly even British.

And the costume itself would be testimony to my competence as a mother. The child who wears a wizard costume is unquestionably the product of a home that’s brimming with creative energy, good books and a mom who knows her way around a glue gun. A kid who’s a ninja has a mom who lets him watch too much TV. A mom whose creativity is limited to dragging her kid’s black sweatpants out of the laundry basket.

“Are you sure you still want to be a wizard?” I asked Lewis during the last week of September.

“Yes,” he said.

“You wouldn’t rather be a ghost?” I probed. “We’ve got the sheets.”

“I really want to be a wizard,” he said.